That's incredible! I think they need to rest & be dormant for the winter, they do here in the ground, nothing you're doing wrong. Did that beauty have a name? Seems like they're really starting to make a lot of awesome new Caladiums!

coleus are pretty easy to winter over.. if you get it out of your head.. that you are going to preserve the plant you start with ...

how i did it .. was to root some cuttings in fall .. before frost ... and by about 1/1 .. when it was getting ugly and leggy indoors ... i rooted a few more .. and when they were rooted .. i threw out the old one ... etc .. again in march ..

and then again .. in late may .. to get a healthy small plant to go out after frost/freeze ....

cuttings are the exact same plant.. no need to have an ugly grandpa by spring..

ken

So Ken you are saying you keep cutting and rooting the plant?

purple the tag says Sweetheart. I looked up the name and it does not look like this plant though so it the tags might have been switched because they had a lot of different type of caladiums in the display. That happens a lot at nurseries.

Yeah, people shopping sometimes accidentally put tags back in the wrong pot. I've never seen any Caladium with that curly part where it attaches to the stem. It's so frilly & pretty!

Most resources I've checked say Caladium bulbs are not hardy lower than zone 9 but all of mine are back from last year, even in pots, and there's one that was here when I moved in 5 yrs. ago. Most of them have put up bigger leaves (and some flowers) than last year. When I lived in OH, I would just let the pots get frosted, then put in basement until spring. A garage would probably be better but I didn't have one a lot of years.

Ken, not sure how I would take a Caladium cutting. Do you mean the petioles form roots or do you just use part of a leaf? That would never occur to me to try. Do they eventually form a bulb?

Ken didn't say you could root Caladiums...his comment was directed towards the Coleus that Marquest says she cannot keep alive over the winter. I was confused for a minute, too!

If your house is too hot and dry in the winter, even hardy coleus doesn't like it much, especially after a long season. They are especially difficult, I think, if they've been allowed to flower. I agree that cuttings taken in the fall seem to do MUCH better in the house over the winter. Just give them plenty of light.

LOL, yes purple he was trying to tell me how to keep coleus alive for the winter.

I grow my Cladiums in pots and just put them in the basement too. I do not take them out of the pots they just come out every Spring and start growing. They are easy to grow year after year.

OP said: I cannot for the life of me keep a coleus alive through the winter.

===>> and off i went on that tangent.. and it has NOTHING to do with caladium ....

speaking of which.. were not worth the effort of wintering over.. in my forced air house ...

now my uncle who had a Michigan basement.. otherwise known as a root cellar ... did things i cant do in winter.. in a house with NO humidity ... even for bulb storage ..

ken

Marquest, did the quality of your caladium remain high from year to year?

Marquest, did the quality of your caladium remain high from year to year?

rizo they get better. After my first frost I bring the pots into my laundry room that is 60-70 degrees and stop watering. Bring them out and sprinkle some water on the soil and they come back every year.

I have pots of Cannas, Dahlias, Glads. Tuberose, EE, Calla Lilies all stay in their pots all winter and I bring them out every spring. I put some coleus in the pots and I have instant annual pots for the patio. lol

Well duh & poo & probably a few other really nasty 3-letter words. I thought we were about to embark on an interesting new propagation adventure. Oops, all I can say is the both start with C.

Thanks!

lolol...it was a nice thought while it lasted, huh?

OK, so Ken, I'm just trying to make sure I understand you. Are you saying that throughout the winter you take cuttings of the cuttings? (Coleus cuttings) Like when they start to get slimy and nasty after several weeks you just take another cutting off the top?

Marquest, I think I have the same caladium. It's very pretty.

{{gwi:10325}}

Christine

That is going to be a pretty combo with the pink flowers. Mine does not have a green border but the rest of the colors look the same.